VC Labs - Researching Search

We can study in both real-time and in weekly or monthly statistics to see what is happening on the Internet and monitor and analyse changes on Google. We refer to this as 'the network'. Currently the network gains traffic of over 10 million people worldwide. We are primarily interested in changes in Google algorithm scoring system.

April 30, 2018

This "network" makes VC unique in the SEO community. It is only by having websites literally on every subject, from ten page mini sites, to monster directories and large information sites that we can study SEO be able to anticipate changes in customer search behaviour, and, more importantly, protect our clients from all Google updates.

How do we do this? Because these are the exact same changes we would make if we owned Google.

We used to publish findings. However as most of our research indicated that current SEO beliefs and practices, whilst having a grain of truth, were in fact fallacies and that a number of search definites are in fact quite wrong.

Keyword research is naturally vital. The success of an SEO campaign is dependent on getting this piece of work right.

Why? Because this affects the visibility of your website for the terms in the keyword list, and the list is the result of the keyword research.

We are able to apply keyword-by-keyword strategies which are designed to improve the ranking for each individual keyword which we can measure.

This means we no longer have to use the ‘hunches’ about what a good keyword is that our competitors seem to rely on, and enables us to sensibly prioritise keywords by traffic volume and conversion rates. We use this same process to routinely audit the flow of traffic over time, which enables us to respond early to any changes in the market with a coherent strategy.

Our focus is always on finding the potential customer by the keywords that they use. This supports our development of the long tail or secondary keywords which is where the truly substantial gains are made.

Clients want to hear their telephones ringing and their P&L accounts moving in the right direction

Our clients want to hear their telephones ringing and their P&L accounts moving in the right direction, so they are more than happy to take advantage of all that we discover. Whilst we are not presumptuous to think our clients could be interested in all of what we do, we realise they have businesses to run.

Research: Tracking and reacting to changes in visitor behaviour

One thing VC takes very seriously is our research into search.

We have over 3000 thousand websites which we study in real-time what we're looking for is changes in user search behaviour. We used to publish white papers on our data and will be discovered to be true or false.

We stop doing this was plainly obvious that the vast majority of SCO agencies had neither the interest nor the inclination to change.

SEO rules appear to be set in stone.

What has become apparent in our latest study (2015 to 2017) is that the Internet user is becoming more search savvy and more impatient. A users time on a spent on webpage has fallen from 2.7 seconds to 2.3.

Users and is less likely to be content with Google's results for inaccurate keywords. Search is becoming dominated by the longer tail, or the key word is being replaced by the key phrase.

For example this is further illustrated be the use of geographical searches, where the user does not want any solicitor, they want a solicitor in their local area.

Vanilla Circus believes in accountability and analysis in order to modify strategy, to achieve SEO success.

About VC

You might not read about VC in a blog, nor see us in a “best SEO list” website, we do not comment in forums, nor do we advertise.

This is because few SEOs are interested in facts or research; they often prefer myths and Google speak / PR to what they could discover for themselves. If they did a few weeks research many would see that many gospel SEO truths are in fact part truths and are mainly superfluous.

You may read quotes from VC in the Guardian, Times and on the BBC. We prefer the phone to email and if we do not think we can help you then we will say immediately.